CHAPTER IV

AIDS TO CONCENTRATION

LET me now give some hints which will make a great
improvement in the practice of concentration.
Many people fail in concentration because they make the
mistake of trying to grasp the mental image firmly. Do not
do that. Place the chosen idea before your attention and
look at it calmly, as you would look at your watch to see the
time. Such gentle looking reveals the details of a thing quite
as well as any intense effort could possibly doperhaps even
better.
Try it now, for five minutes, for when once you have
realized how to look a thing over and see it completelyin
whole and in part, without staring, peering, frowning, holding
the breath, clenching the fists, or any such action, you can
apply your power to the mental practice of concentration.
Pick up any common objecta watch, a pen, a book, a leaf,
a fruit, and look at it calmly for five minutes. Observe every
detail that you can about it, as to the colour, weight, size,
texture, form, composition, construction, ornamentation,
and the rest, without any tension whatever. Attention
without tension is what you want.
After you have felt how to do this, you will understand
how concentration can be carried on in perfect quietude. If
you wanted to hold out a small object at arm's length for as
long a time as possible, you would hold it with a minimum
of energy, letting it rest in the hand, not gripping it tightly.
Do not imagine that the idea that you have chosen for
your concentration has some life and will of its own, and that
it wants to jump about or to run away from you. It is not
the object that is fickle, but the mind. Trust the object to
remain where you have put it, before the mind's eye, and
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AIDS TO CONCENTRATION 17
keep your attention poised upon it. No grasping is necessary;
indeed, that tends to destroy the concentration.
People usually employ their mental energy only in the
service of the body, and in thinking in connexion with it.
They find that the mental flow is unobstructed and that
thinking is easy when there is a physical object to hold the
attention, as, for example, in reading a book. Argumentation
is easy when each step is fixed in print or writing, or the
thought is stimulated by conversation. Similarly, a game of
chess is easy to play when we see the board; but to play it
blindfold is a more difficult matter.
The habit of thinking only in association with bodily
activity and stimulus is generally so great that a special
effort of thought is usually accompanied by wrinkling of the
brows, tightening of the lips, and various muscular, nervous
and functional disorders. The dyspepsia of scientific men and
philosophers is almost proverbial. A child when learning
anything displays the most astonishing contortions. When
trying to write it often follows the movements of its hands
with its tongue, grasps its pencil very tightly, twists its feet
round the legs of its chair, and so makes itself tired in a
very short time.
All such things must be stopped in the practice of concentration.
A high degree of mental effort is positively injurious
to the body unless this stoppage is at least partially
accomplished. Muscular and nervous tension have nothing
to do with concentration, and success in the exercise is not
to be measured by any bodily sensation or feeling whatever.
Some people think that they are concentrating when they
feel a tightness between and behind the eyebrows; but
they are only producing headaches and other troubles for
themselves by encouraging the feeling. It is almost a
proverb in India that the sage or great thinker has a
smooth brow.